Why Mandarin Chinese is hard (and how to start speaking very quickly)
An unconventional fast-track model to cut your time to fluency by 50%
About 13% of world population speaks Mandarin Chinese.
Have you ever wished you could speak Chinese (fluently) with a native speaker?
Memorise some Chinese characters and phrases, then we are ready to communicate in Chinese language.
Unfortunately, conversational Chinese isn’t that easy.
Why Mandarin Chinese is so hard?
Well, Chinese character is ridiculously complicated.
Second, the pronunciation and the tones are weird!
Third, Chinese grammar rules are confusing!!
Fourth, learning material/ method is boring!!!!
I could go on and on, but still, you want to learn Chinese despite all the challenges, right?
Many new Chinese language learners targeted to learn Chinese characters and the pronunciation (Pinyin) at the same time without realising learning Chinese characters could take years.
Why speaking Mandarin Chinese is easier than you’ve thought — 4 Popular Chinese Language Myths Debunked
1) All Chinese characters are pictographic?
No. You may have early fascination with certain characters like the above, which are indeed pictographic and easier to be remembered. As this word-creation method is hard to express abstract thoughts, it only make up at most 4% of the Chinese characters. In other words, if you want to be conversational asap, learning Chinese characters might be one of your greatest challenges.
2) Memorisation of Chinese characters is mandatory to be conversational in Chinese.
No. Most Chinese speakers learn how to speak before learning Chinese characters. Even if you don’t have a tutor/ learning buddy, there are cutting-edge technologies like chatbot to help you practice conversational Chinese with or without Chinese characters. You can learn and chat in Latin Letters (Pinyin)!
** Hanyu Pinyin is the Chinese romanization.
3) Do I need to learn many Chinese words to be conversational?
No. There may be up to 106,230 characters (Yitizi Zidian) but the vast majority of them are archaic. Research shows that you just need 2% of all Chinese words to be conversational. Mastering 1000 Chinese words is enough for handling daily situations, both in and out of a professional context. (information modified from http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/)
4) It takes years to achieve 75% understanding in Chinese?
No.
Chinese words are in fact compounds of a ‘picture’ element (character) and a ‘sound’ element (Pinyin). Hanyu Pinyin is not a system for spelling the shapes of characters; it is a system for spelling the sounds of the Chinese Han language. In other words, we can learn Hanyu Pinyin and the characters separately. Start communicate in Chinese with half of the effort.
You can achieve 75% understanding in 6–12 months by following 4 simple steps:
Unconventional fast-track conversational Mandarin Chinese:
If you want to be conversational asap, master spoken Chinese with Pinyin first and learn Chinese characters later. Your learning experience will be more manageable and enjoyable this way.
All information are cited with permission from Eggbun Chat to Learn Chinese. For more interesting culture notes and experiencing chatbot, please visit https://eggbun2.app.link/TOnkticRBy.
